


Une Barque sur l'Océan

by dangerouspheels



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: AU, Anxiety Attacks, Figure Skater Bitty, I'll add more tags along the way, M/M, Pianist Jack, he still plays hockey tho, mentions of overdose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 13:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11418492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangerouspheels/pseuds/dangerouspheels
Summary: Jack was at Samwell to study history and play hockey, and music was not supposed to be a part of his life anymore.Except it was.Can a freshman figure skater drag him out of the hole he has dug himself into?





	Une Barque sur l'Océan

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I know I said that I would write nhl Bitty first, but I'm in turkey because my brother is playing in the european championships volleyball here, and I'm really motivated to write this story now, so here we are. Nhl bitty will come at some point this summer though!  
> I hope you enjoy this!

“Good evening, Jack,” the girl working behind the reception desk of the dance studio greeted him.

Jack smiled, “Good evening, Emily.”

Emily, a tall, dark-haired junior, had been working at the dance studios at least as long as Jack had been coming there, and after she had caught him sneaking in once, she had assured him that he could use one of the empty studios whenever he liked.

He had given up on trying to sneak in a long time ago, but he knew that Emily, or whoever was working when he came here – Alex, a freshman, had recently landed themselves a part-time job at the studios, and the first week they had been so nervous that Jack felt bad for them – would keep his secret, even though Emily had multiple classes with Shitty and Jack was pretty sure Alex had a class with Ollie, one of the new guys on the SMH. The team knew about his past – of course, he was still Alicia and Bad Bob Zimmermann’s son – but after the first few weeks of his freshman year, they had learned not to talk about the piano. Jack was at Samwell to study history and play hockey, and piano was not supposed to be a part of his life anymore.

Except it was.

“Studio 3 should be empty,” Emily informed him.

Jack thanked her and made his way to the familiar studio, which was indeed empty. The only piece of furniture in the room – except for the giant mirrors covering every wall – was a beautiful black Steinway. It was obviously second-hand and Jack could probably find better ones at the music department, but his first piano had looked exactly like this one, which was why studio 3 was his favourite. The other studios had good vertical pianos, but none of them felt and sounded like home.

Not that Jack knew that from experience, because he had never heard a sound come out of any of them. He often came to the studios multiple times a week, and he had been for a year now – since the start of sophomore year – but he had never found the courage to actually touch one of the pianos.

He just… couldn’t.

He had tried, in the beginning. He had sat down in front of the piano, placed his fingers on the touches, but the music had never started. Every time he touched the piano, he felt that feeling again. The perfectionism. The pressure. But most of all, the fear.

Dedicating his life to playing the piano had almost killed him once before, and knowing that once he played the first note, he wouldn’t be able to stop, he didn’t want to risk making the same mistake again.

Deep down Jack down that this was the anxiety talking. He didn’t overdose because he loved playing, he overdosed because of the pressure of being the son of Alicia Zimmermann, one of the world’s most famous pianists, the pressure to get into some prestigious conservatory and follow into his mother’s footsteps.

He knew it was the anxiety talking, but that hadn’t made him less scared when he first came to the dance studios a year ago, and it didn’t make him less scared now.

So he sat down on the floor next to the piano and took out his diary. This had been his therapist’s idea.

The first time he had gone to see Sarah, a young therapist right out of university, after he got out of rehab, he had hated it. He had never been good at expressing his feelings, and doing it to a stranger because he was ‘sick’ had made no sense to him.

Now, though, five years later, Sarah had become more of a friend than a therapist and he actually looked forward to his therapy sessions.

However, his verbal communication skills had improved very little over the years, so now he wrote his feelings down. Whenever he went to the dance studios, he would sit down and write about everything and nothing. About his team’s achievements or losses, about the interesting parts of his history classes, about Shitty’s latest debacles, about the excitement of being named captain of the hockey team, which came hand in hand with the anxiety of following in his father’s footsteps.

The therapy had truly helped a lot, and Jack wasn’t as incapable of dealing with having talented parents as he was when he was a teenager, but it wasn’t like it didn’t affect him at all anymore.

He still froze every time he heard his name mentioned on a sports program on tv, because most of the time the analysts tried as hard as they could to make sure everyone knew how fucked up Jack was.

He was playing great?

Well, he’d probably collapse under the pressure soon, just like he did when he was supposed to audition and get into Juilliard to become the next Alicia Zimmermann.

He was chosen as the captain in his junior year?

That must’ve been because of his dad, because how good can a guy that hasn’t played organised hockey for 10 years before he went to college really be?

Nothing Jack did would ever be good enough, and sometimes Jack realised that that was the exact reason why he shouldn’t listen to them, but sometimes it just sucked. Sometimes Shitty would stay with him for hours watching history documentaries until he was sure Jack’s anxiety had faded enough to go to sleep. On the bad nights, he wouldn’t leave. Jack would wake up in the morning with an almost – if not entirely – naked Shitty wrapped around him, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. It had in the beginning, but he had quickly gotten used to it and now he couldn’t imagine life without a half-naked Shitty by his side.

This sentiment was reinforced again when he walked into the Haus after his trip to the dance studios, and Shitty was sitting at the kitchen counter, waiting for him.

“You know, Jack,” he started, “I’m not gonna force you to talk about it, but you and I both know that you don’t go to the library as often as you say. Even you wouldn’t go to the library on a Saturday at 9pm. So if you don’t want to tell me, I respect that, but I’m here if you need to talk, brah.”

For a fraction of a second, Jack considered telling Shitty. If he’d tell anyone, it would be Shitty. But Sarah had assured him that as long as he didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell his friends, he didn’t have to. She told him that it was important to have these quiet moments to himself, and his friends wouldn’t pry as long as they knew Jack was safe. One thing she had taught Jack was that there was a difference between lying and not feeling comfortable enough to tell the full truth. He learned that if he told his friends as much of the truth as he could, even if that meant saying that he didn’t want to tell them anything, they would respect that, because they were great friends.

So Jack did exactly that.

“Shits, I’m-” Jack explained, “I don’t want to talk about it. Yet. But I’m okay, and you don’t need to worry about me.” 

Shitty nodded.

“Okay, okay. But I still require a hug.”

Jack laughed and walked right into Shitty’s arms. Sometimes it amazed him how comfortable he had started feeling in this college frat house, with a bunch of the most affectionate, bro-ish dudes – and usually lady, although Lardo was spending the first semester of her sophomore year in Kenya – he had ever met.

That night, however, he dreamt of Maurice Ravel’s “Une Barque sur L’océan”– one of his favourite pieces of music and the last piece he would’ve played at his Juilliard audition, had he been there – and he woke up with itching fingers.

 

“Good evening, Jack,” Emily greeted.

Jack, having been in a bad mood ever since he woke up and couldn’t shake off the notes that flashed before his eyes and the anxiety that accompanied them, just nodded and said, “Emily.”

Emily smiled knowingly. Jack had never told her why he came to the dance studios so often, but between his well-known past and his obvious lack of grace, she had probably guessed that he wasn’t there to dance.

“You can have studio 3,” she offered.

Jack managed to pull his face into something resembling a smile.

“Thanks, Emily.”

He walked into through the hallways like he had done so many times. He opened the door to studio 3 like he had done so many times.

In the doorway, he froze.

Studio 3 wasn’t empty.

In the middle of the room stood a boy, blond and small at first sight – he barely looked older than eighteen – but underneath his dance shorts and loose tank top Jack could clearly distinguish a strong dancer’s body.

The boy didn’t seem to notice Jack, and he decided that he should probably leave and ask Emily if there was another studio he could use, until the boy started moving and Jack’s breath hitched.

Jack had seen professional danseurs before. He went to Les Grands Ballets in Montréal when he was younger, and his mom even worked with dancers sometimes, but he had never seen anything like this. The boy moved with such ease and grace, he made the jumps and pirouettes look easy. He hadn’t opened his eyes once since Jack had entered the room, and there was no music, but there might as well have been, because Jack could _hear_ it. The only sounds in the room were the steady taps of his feet on the floor and two sets of breaths, one quick with exercise and one heavy with wonder, but Jack didn’t want anything more than to sit down at the piano and play what he saw, because this boy created music with his body. _Beautiful_ music _._ Fast and raw with emotion, with powerful bursts of freedom and strength and slow interludes filled with fear and uncertainty.

And then he stopped.

Jack thought about moving, either into the room or as far away from it as humanly possible, but his body seemed temporarily useless. Until the dancer opened his eyes, spotted Jack in the mirror and gasped.

Jack ran.

He ran past Emily, who shouted something he couldn’t hear, he ran and kept running, all across the campus back to the Haus. When he tried to open the front door, he realised that his hands were shaking uncontrollably. He stumbled inside and up the stairs, grateful for the fact that he didn’t walk into any of his friends. He just couldn’t stop hearing the music and he felt like he might be sick.

Which is how Shitty found him minutes later: on his knees in their shared bathroom, waiting for the vomit to come up or the nausea to end, hands gripping the toilet until his knuckles were white in a desperate attempt to stop them from shaking.

“Jack!” Shitty exclaimed upon walking into the bathroom, and he dropped down to his knees next to Jack, “Jack, what’s wrong?”

Jack’s bottom lip started quivering.

“I- I can’t… I can’t play,” he croaked out, and the first tear rolled down his cheek.

“Of course you can’t, you’re obviously sick!” Shitty agreed, “But we don’t have a game until Saturday, you’ll be fine by then!”

He started rubbing Jack’s back to comfort him and surprisingly, it kind of worked. A bit.

“No,” Jack sighed through his tears, “not hockey. I can play hockey. I’m just, I can’t-”, a sob tore through his body, “I miss playing the piano. So much.”

There, he said it. He admitted it out loud.

“Oh Jack,” Shitty said, pulling Jack into his arms, “then play. I’ll go with you if you want, I’m sure they have pianos in the music department, or at the dance studios.”

Jack shook his head against Shitty’s chest.

“That’s where I always go, the dance studios. But I- I can’t. I dedicated years of my life to playing the piano, and look where that got me. You know what happened. Shits, I- I play the piano like I play hockey. I can’t just go to the dance studios every once in a while for fun. If I start playing again, the second I play my first note, I fall. I fall into an endless hole of compositions and notes and music, and expectations. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes that hole is the best place on earth. When I play the piano, I can lose it all for a while. My famous parents, the media, the anxiety, they all don’t exist, and it’s so fucking liberating and when I play the piano, I can breathe. But then I stop, and it all comes crashing down. So the closer I came to my audition, I just didn’t stop as much. Sometimes I played for hours on end, and my parents thought I was just working hard for my audition, and Kent had his own worries with the draft and all, so no one stopped me. But then the fallout would be ten times worse afterwards, and I started taking more medication than I should’ve, and… well, you know how that ended.”

Shitty wordlessly puller him closer and Jack felt tears dripping down on his forehead.

“So no, I can’t go there again, because I’m not sure I would get out of it this time. And I have a life here, with you guys. I play hockey now, and I love hockey. I’ll- I’ll get over it.”

Shitty pulled away a little bit to look Jack in the eyes.

“If that’s really what you think is the best, then I’ll help you get over it. But I think not playing hurts you more than playing would. You’re not a lonely teenager anymore, Jack. If you don’t want to play, that’s fine, but if you decide that you do, me and every single person who loves you – which are a lot of people – will always be at the top of that hole to pull you out.”

Jack didn’t know what to say.

“I- thanks, Shits, but I don’t think…” he trailed off.

“Okay.”

And that was it. Shitty didn’t push, he just reached behind Jack for a towel to wipe both of their tear-stained faces, dragged Jack to his bed and collapsed next to him.

Right before he fell asleep on Shitty’s shoulder, Jack realised that he hadn’t even told him about the boy at the dance studios.

**Author's Note:**

> So... that was the first chapter. I really love the idea, but i'm scared that I'm gonna ruin it, so any feedback is more than welcome!  
> Also, all my works are unbeta'ed so if anyone is interested in beta'ing my works and helping me improve them, hmu!  
> Like I said, I'm at the european championships volleyball rn, and I kinda wanna write a story about a volleyball team, but I don't know if I want to write an original story or a fanfic. Would anyone be interested to read a story about the SMH as a volleyball team?  
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


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